San Pedro has a snail problem. Here's how you can help.

Thursday, August 1, 2019
San Pedro has a snail problem. Here's how you can help.
San Pedro has a snail problem. Here's how you can help.Hoards of white garden snails are invading a nature preserve in San Pedro, killing native plants.

SAN PEDRO, Calif. (KABC) -- It's a bizarre sight: thousands and thousands of snails, all clumped together, clinging onto everything from street cones to plant stems at the White Point Nature Preserve in San Pedro.

"In the winter and the spring, we had a lot of rain so the population really grew," said Conservation Director of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, Cris Sarabia.

Rain is always celebrated here in Southern California, but white garden snails? Not so much.

"Unfortunately, the snails tend to attach themselves to our native plants and over time they end up eating the plants to the ground and move on to another plant," Sarabia said.

Experts say the white garden snail is Mediterranean and believed to have traveled to California via shipping containers around one hundred years ago.

"They're not native to this area, so they don't have any natural predators," said Sarabia.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy invites the public to come out to the White Point Nature Preserve and help remove the invasive snails manually. For more information, visit their website.

Copyright © 2024 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.